For a time in 2013, the leader of Ontario’s Official Opposition took to warning his province that it was at risk of winding up like Detroit.

To anyone passingly familiar with the hollowed-out city across the river from Windsor – a place that has suffered so much from crime, poverty, systemic corruption, racial tensions and migration that it can seem almost post-apocalyptic – the comparison was absurd. It was also easy to understand why Tim Hudak felt compelled to make it, and why he might make similar reaches in the early stages of 2014, heading into a likely spring election.